[Leica] Photo London Review - and those Salgado Prints

Tue May 26 11:29:51 PDT 2015

Thanks for the heads up Peter. Might try and get to it yet.

Paris Photo seemed certainly less crowded when it moved to the Grand Palais 
from the Louvre.

Douglas

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Dzwig" <pdzwig at summaventures.com>
To: "Leica Users Group" <lug at leica-users.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 6:03 PM
Subject: [Leica] Photo London Review - and those Salgado Prints

>I said I would post a review of Photo London, so here we go! Bear in mind 
>that
> this is my personal opinion.
>
> Overall
> =======
>
> This is the first in an intended series of shows to rival, if that is the 
> right
> word, Paris Photo. London has been lacking a major show of this type and 
> despite
> having a fairly active photographic market it lacks a main event around 
> which to
> focus. This in despite of the UK having produced some very important 
> figures in
> the history of photography, think Fox-Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, 
> Brandt,
> McCullin, Parr and many more.
>
> The mixture of talks, interviews and exhibitions was what you would expect 
> from
> a show with the aspirations of Photo London and although I was unable to 
> attend
> any, the reports have been very good. My loss, I had particularly wanted 
> to hear
> McCullin and Salgado speak, but by the time that I was able to settle when 
> I
> could go it was too late to get tickets.
>
>
>
> The Venue
> =========
>
> As a first event the show was excellent. Somerset House is an outstanding
> building with great history and interesting spaces. However it isn't up to
> holding this. I went on the Saturday and the place was packed and in many 
> places
> it was impossible to stand back, or even stand still, and look at the 
> pictures
> that were being exhibited, so great was the throng.
>
> Long term Somerset House can't remain the venue, movement is restricted,
> exhibitors have inadequate space to allow people to pause, there is little
> seating so that you can't sit down and contemplate a photo. The 
> publisher's area
> was tiny, overcrowded and situated as it was in one of the main entrance 
> areas
> actually stopped people circulating.
>
> A better venue would be Tate Modern or somewhere similar with much larger 
> spaces.
>
> Quality of Exhibits
> ====================
>
> Bbviously this is subjective, but the quality of the exhibits was very 
> variable.
> There were quite a number that you would probably reject from in your 
> family
> photo album, so little merit did they possess yet somehow were able to
> masquerade as fine art.
>
> Using the LUG as a benchmark, many wouldn't even have been submitted. Many 
> of
> the prints were of dubious and very varied quality, a point I will come 
> back to
> in a few lines. Certainly printing varied: there were several cases where 
> prints
> weren't all of the same quality, even though by the same photographer, of
> exactly the same image but exhibited by different galleries.
>
> Much European and Asian work was trying to be radical, to the point that 
> they
> looked tired and outdated and anything but radical. That said there was a 
> great
> deal of very fine work which you could live with and which would also be
> "collectible".
>
> For me some the antique prints being shown by Robert Hershkowitz would win 
> my
> prize for most interesting gallery. Yes there were the usual galleries 
> selling
> selections of HCB, Arbus, Rodchenko and Salgado and all the rest, but 
> their
> prints were somehow magical
>
> There were also two special exhibits
>
> (i) Beneath the Surface
>
> This is a selection from the Victoria and Albert Museum's archives and 
> hence
> rarely seen. It was fantastic covering the whole of the history of 
> photography
> containing pictures which are rarely exhibited at the V&A. This remarkable
> exhibition remains at Somerset House until the end of August and I 
> recommend any
> LUGers who can to go and have a look if you get the chance.
>
>
> (ii) Prostitute
>
> This special exhibition is a history of the Shahr-e No red light district 
> of
> Teheran by the late Kaveh Golestan. By turns fascinating and sad, this 
> merits a
> good look if you are inclined towards ethnographical documentary 
> photography. I
> understand that it is touring intermittently.
>
>
> Organisation
> =============
>
> Surprisingly, having pre-booked and entered by a main entrance, the 
> security
> guard on that particular door had no idea what Photo London was, despite 
> the
> fact that it had taken over a large slice of Somerset House. When I 
> eventually
> found it and went to collect my tickets, I was told to go to the 
> pre-booking
> desk to collect my guide (although they gave me the tickets) and tthey 
> took me
> back to the front desk etc.
>
> The show could have been better organised and a lot of lessons can be 
> taken from
> this first show that need to be addressed in the second.
>
>
> The Salgado Platinum Prints
> ===========================
>
> Now the Salgado prints. There was an exhibition of about twenty 
> hand-printed
> Platinum Prints called "Genesis on Platinum". The prints were all marked 
> "Bat
> 1/1" and were all stamped and signed.
>
> They were printed on what looked like Arche or something similar, to 
> larger than
> A2 size. The quality wasn't what I was expecting at all. The more so since 
> there
> were a number of other prints by Salgado, nominally in limited editions, 
> among
> the galleries exhibiting.
>
> Overall their definition wasn't brilliant, and this really impacted their 
> merit
> in my eyes. Even compared with the ones that were shown in the touring 
> Genesis
> exhibition they weren't as striking. In fact I preferred the prints of 
> them in
> the glossy brochure and also some (but not all) of those in the 
> exhibition.
>
>
>
> "Prizes":
>
> My prize for the most striking image goes to a print of cattle herders in
> Southern Sudan on a pearl-like roll paper, a version of this one:
>
> <http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1400951/sebastiao-salgado-dinka-cattle-camp-southern-sudan-2006.jpg>
>
>
>
> However for sheer "best image" my prize goes to one of these two, by 
> Sugimoto
> both Platinum Palladium prints exhibited at A1+. Either
>
> <http://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/cahiers-dart-gallery-hiroshi-sugimoto-designboom-22.jpg>
>
> or this:
>
> <http://www.designboom.com/art/cahiers-art-hiroshi-sugimoto-100th-issue-of-the-revue-07-06-2014/gallery/image/cahiers-dart-gallery-hiroshi-sugimoto-2/>
>
> Both had amazing detail, depth, gradation, resolution and maintain a quiet
> simplicity. I think that the latter probably wins for me.
>
>
> Verdict: Good, could do better.
>
>
> Peter Dzwig
>
>
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